5 takeaways from Cameron’s grilling on taxes

Barely 72 hours after David Cameron’s authority appeared to be draining away thanks to a week of damaging headlines about his family finances, the prime minister faced his opposite number Jeremy Corbyn across the despatch box Wednesday as if nothing had happened.

Cameron, who still faces questions over undeclared shareholdings after publishing his tax returns in the wake of the Panama Papers leak, was cheered by the Tory benches. As ever, Labour MPs watched glumly on as their leader failed to land a significant blow during the weekly Commons duel.

It was the first Prime Minister’s Questions since the House of Commons returned after Easter and came as the government was facing embarrassing revelations that Culture Secretary John Whittingdale had a relationship with a sex worker.

Here are five takeaways:

1. Cameron feels confident enough to mock Corbyn’s taxes

After being attacked by the Labour leader for cutting the number of tax collectors by 20 percent, the prime minister rose to his feet to chide the opposition leader for making a series of mistakes on his tax return — having spent hours struggling to find it in the first place.

To cheers from Tory MPs, Cameron said: “I’m glad he wants to get onto our responsibilities to pay our taxes. I think that’s very important. His tax return was a metaphor for Labour policy — it was late, it was chaotic, it was inaccurate, it was uncosted.”

The gag even had Labour frontbenchers Angela Eagle and Tom Watson, sitting either side of Corbyn, trying to suppress a smile.

2. Corbyn, to his credit, really doesn’t do personal

The Labour leader has refused to raise any issue during Prime Minister’s Questions that he believes is private, and stayed true to his word Wednesday. Even when Cameron’s own mother criticized budget cuts to local councils — the consequence of her son’s decisions as prime minister — Corbyn refused to engage.

The Labour leader also did not touch the main story of the day: whether or not Britain’s newspapers had held a story about a leading Conservative’s sex life in order to hold more sway over him.

It may be to his credit, but many Labour MPs accept that politics is a dirty game and are desperate for a leader with a nasty streak who can occasionally hit the government where it hurts.

3. The Labour leader is warming — ever so slightly — to the Westminster knockabout

Corbyn began his time as leader of the opposition promising to turn the weekly slanging match between the Labour and Tory leaders into a “people’s question time.” Each week he would read out questions sent to him from ordinary members of the public. He has slowly been making less use of this tactic, and on Wednesday did not ask a single question on behalf of “Judy in Slough” or “Mark in Hull.”

He also managed to fire off a pre-prepared joke of his own, which had his colleagues laughing in support.

“I’m grateful to the prime minister for drawing attention to my own tax return,” Corbyn said, somewhat disingenuously. “There, warts and all — the warts being my hand writing, all being my generous donation to HMRC [the tax office].”

He then added: “I actually paid more tax than some companies owned by people who might know quite well.”

The gag was aimed squarely at the absent Chancellor of Exchequer George Osborne, whose tax return revealed he had earned £40,000 (€50,000) in dividends from shares in his father’s company, which paid no tax at all. Touché.

4. Labour may struggle to get any more mileage out of the tax scandal

Corbyn used all six of his allotted questions to probe the prime minister about his government’s record on tax. He mocked Cameron for not even being able to convince Britain’s overseas territories to publish a register of company owners and chided him for allowing the “tax gap” to grow.

But the Labour leader failed to land a serious blow and by next week, it’s likely that the subject will have moved on as the May 5 local and regional elections are just round the corner. And, of course, there’s the ever-present EU referendum to keep Westminster transfixed.

5. The SNP’s Angus Robertson continues to cause more difficulties than Corbyn

Robertson, who knows Cameron well after being elected to parliament in the same year as the prime minister — 2001 — has a certain degree of authority in the House of Commons and is widely seen as an effective operator.

This afternoon, he demanded to know from Cameron why, after six years of being prime minister, the U.K. and its overseas territories “collectively sits at the top of the financial secrecy index of the tax justice network.”

Cameron, who is usually very fluent, could only complain that the rankings were “unfair.”